Bad Night?

 

The debate Thursday night was a disaster for Biden. He was tongue-tied, he got lost, he looked really old. The Democrats have a problem. There is still, barely, time to change horses, but probably only if Biden himself calls it quits, which he obviously is not ready to do.

Then there would be the awful brouhaha with Kamala. She would be the “obvious” choice in terms of placement as VP, but not in the hearts of her countrymen. To me, she has the permanent vision of superficiality. She's sharp, she can hold her own on stage, but her campaign for President was a disaster in terms of organization, and in terms of her self-presentation. She didn't have a firm grasp of issues – for instance, beyond saying “single payer health care system,” she had almost no idea of what it entailed, her allegiance to that idea was purely political, where does it place me. Ask her about it, and it's a void. Her vision is very narrow. And let's not even go to her chronic inability to manage an office at any level, and think how could she organize the office of the President. Talk about disaster.

But if you go to the other natural contenders, and if they are victorious, the self-proclaimed vital center of the Democratic party, black women, (which I don't believe, by the way) take a hike over being disrespected, decry racism, and damn the consequences for democracy. So, that's a wonderful scenario.

Foreseeing these and other complications, the Democrats shy away and proclaim the Thursday Disaster “a bad night.” We all have them, says Obama. It's time we have his back as he has had ours, says Newsom – who must be ultra-loyal in public to preserve his viability, of course, and at the same time he shows off his verbal abilities – it's a subtle show, but not too subtle.

But was it just “a bad night” that anyone could have had? Tim Miller says, convincingly to me, that "a bad night" minimizes it.

What's confusing is this:

Biden has a basic disability with language, stuttering being only one part of it.  He has difficulty getting from thought to verbal expression; you can see him getting frustrated with it.  He doesn't organize his thoughts well – that's why he always resorts to a list of numbered points – “that's one, and now, number two....” You could even call it an expressive aphasia. As with so many people with disabilities, he has found workarounds to get around it all his life, and it's so interesting that he has chosen a field where his disability is right in the center of what he has to do -- verbal expression and politics are inseparable.  It's like if someone with congenitally stiff and deformed fingers decided to become a graphic artist.  It's a constant struggle, and the battle line varies, sometimes it gets overcome, and sometimes it overcomes you. So, if you view his performance as a battle with disability, "bad night" could capture it.

But then there is aging.  His thoughts might be as clear as they always were, but the aging process seems palpable in his appearance.  It's a job that ages you, that makes the natural decline more severe, more precipitous. Obama's whitening hair didn't really bother anyone, but he was at the top of the aging ramp. That's hardly Biden's position.  So you have to wonder, is he really being propelled in an increasingly downward slope?  This year, OK, he's very functional - but 4 years????

It's that latter construction of the events of last Thursday that are most frightening - beyond figuring out whether or not he can beat Trump. And meanwhile, just by the way, whoever prepped him did a crappy job, overloaded him. He needed a little Marco Rubio “set speech,” rather than trying to be ultra-verbal and ultra-adaptable, being able to cut and paste his thoughts seamlessly as the occasion demanded. He needed less “if he says this, say that,” and more “just say this.” Someone was teaching a singles-hitter to go for the fences.

So we'll see. Best scenario – Bad Night! Bad Preparation! Bad Cold!

Let's stick with that. I'm not going with worst scenario this time around. Been there....

Budd Shenkin